Dr. Jonathan Feinstein is the John G. Searle Professor of Economics and Management at the Yale School of Management. His research focuses on creative development - the paths of development creators follow. He is the author of The Nature of Creative Development (Stanford U. Press, 2006). His current research focuses on building formal models of creative development in rich fields / environments. A key step is using knowledge representation to model the environment. The models highlight the rich and unique patterns of learning and paths of development of individuals, as well as how individuals build on the work of each other in the development of fields.

Professor Feinstein earned his BA degree at Stanford University and his Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T. He taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business before coming to Yale. Beyond his work on creativity, he has made a series of contributions in the field of economics, including detection controlled models that have been extensively applied in tax administration and the analysis of regulatory systems, and contributions in the areas of tax compliance and auditing, counter-terrorism, and socioeconomic status and health. Go to www.jonathanfeinstein.com for more information, including a complete CV and papers.

Creativity is not just the moment of insight or when an idea strikes. It is rooted in and grows out of a rich, integrative process unfolding over time and involving many factors. This process includes learning, exploration, intuition and reflection, experimentation, adaptation, and unexpected experiences and responses. It is a winding path - which ultimately leads to novel connections and discoveries. It is a process that is inherently complex and occurs in rich, inherently complex environments. This description fits human creativity, and I believe is likely to be true for any beings or agents with abilities to form concepts, learn, and adapt, evolving ideas and innovations over relatively long paths of development.

The view of creativity as rooted in a complex process is at odds with much of the literature on creativity. It also challenges conventional social science perspectives, which often focus on relatively simple models of behavior and innovation, missing the specificity and uniqueness of individuals’ paths of development and not modeling their rich patterns of learning, experience and exploration.

In my keynote I will argue for this complexity perspective (with examples), then outline a modeling approach linking decision analysis with knowledge representation, pointing the way towards more satisfactory models and understanding of the creative process in relation to fields and complex systems.